Researchers Successfully Implant Mice With False Memories
What Is Real? This is a general lab mouse, not one of the mice described below. Rama on Wikimedia Commons So it is possible. Call it cool or just plain creepy: Memory researchers from U.S. and Japan have, for the first time, implanted false memories into a lab animal. The researchers made mice believe that they had once received electrical shocks in their feet while sitting in a certain little chamber, even though that had never happened. Thereafter, whenever the researchers put the mice in that chamber, the mice would freeze up in a typical mouse response to fear. It's already clear that people are able to form false memories. Think about that family tale about your getting sick at Disneyland-the one that's been told so often, you've felt yourself "remember" the event more and more over the years, even though you were way too young to truly recall it. Or, more seriously,...